Need to move your website, application, email or databases? Fear not, Zen are on hand to support you in migrating from shared, cloud, dedicated and virtual environments, without the fuss and hassle of doing it yourselves.
- Reduce the risk of downtime (= lost revenue) for your business through the use of proper planning and skilled resources
- Ensure sites are fully tested and any errors are fixed in a staging environment BEFORE making the switch
- Conduct critical work out of hours to avoid impacting your core business
- Save time and money by handing the whole process over to professionals.
More than Just HTML
Migrating a single website from one provider to another, cloud environment or shared platform can be a simple enough job. If you are moving a flat HTML website along with a small number of mailboxes then this can be done quickly and easily. However, if you are running a dynamic web site with a database back end, then you do need more technical knowledge, you will also need to understand about propagation-, domain resolution, data synchronisation, back up and most likely website coding so as to ensure nothing goes wrong.
EXAMPLES OF DYNAMIC WEBSITE FUNCTIONS
- CMS (content management system) – server-based software that holds and publishes all types of content, and often has multiple options as to how the website appears and functions.
- Wiki – a visitor-edited resource such as an encyclopedia.
- Blog – a diary or news column type of page display, normally with a comments section for readers’ opinion.
- Forum – a noticeboard program that allows people to start new topics or respond to existing ones.
- eCommerce – a facility to sell items or subscriptions on your website requiring 3rd party integration or payment gateways and software
All applications in these classes are dynamic server-side programs, with a very few exceptions. That means they are software that is installed remotely on a server and that interacts with a website visitor’s browser. They present content from a database on the web server to those who request pages or other information – other media can be served, like images, video, music and so on. A ‘dynamic’ site runs from a database, and page content can be changed; a ‘static’ site is of the older type, with normal web pages that cannot be changed once on the server. Dynamic sites are substantially different from the older style of website that consisted of HTML pages existing on the server. These applications (or ‘apps’) have no existing pages, and serve content from a database, which is an information storage program that holds the text and publishing instructions. Some files exist in the usual directories (folders on the server), such as images – and the occasional static page such as an error page – but the majority of the content is supplied from a database. Pictures and other non-text media comes from the usual server folders, but all text and publishing / site management instructions come from the database – there are no pages on the server.
What happens if I get it wrong?
Preparation and planning prevents mistakes. A poorly planned and managed migration will most likely result in one or more of the following problems:
- Disruption to email communications.
- Unnecessary website downtime resulting in lost sales.
- Broken website functionality, which can lead to a negative experience for site visitors resulting in lost sales, misplaced orders and frustrated customers.
- Errors with orders placed.
- Broken links, security warnings and error messages for site visitors.
- And many, many more things that can happen – experience shows that this list is by no means comprehensive!
You can avoid these problems by contracting your migration to Zen Managed Services. Sit back, relax and let us take all the stress out of your move. We complete a detailed server migration plan for every job, manage and physically carry out the migration for you ensuring that the whole process from start to finish runs smoothly.
Don’t run the risk of getting it wrong – let Zen handle your migration. Nowadays most commercial websites are dynamic, database driven web applications with user generated content or eCommerce functionality and the migration of these sites requires careful planning and management to ensure that any disruption to the service is kept to a minimum. This becomes even more important when the site is generating revenue or if it is being managed on someone else’s behalf.
The Zen website migration service is designed where we provide a full time member of our team to work with existing or inbound customers who have large volumes of websites and domains to move over whether they are HTML or dynamic content. Rather than the standard per incident support or the per day developer rate, Zen now offers a range of solutions providing skilled professionals at bulk hourly rates for working along-side you to do as much or as little as you want;
- New customer hosting plans
- Control panel set up
- Migration of website files and DB store
- Changing of domain and IP address settings
- ColdFusion version testing
- Post migration site testing
What’s the alternative?
You can of course do it yourself (if you have the skills) or pay another provider. Over the years we have tried out a number of specialist migration services ourselves to evaluate their skills, and in almost every case the job was done very badly or they could not complete it at all and left us with a broken migration that we had to complete ourselves.
Cost
Single WebSite Migration – £75 A flat fee charged for moving a single dynamic website with database and setting up your FTP and email accounts. This does not include migrating emails, this is charged on a per user/mailbox basis.
If you have more than 3 websites to migrate, please contact us for a custom quote.
Hourly Rate – £55.00 hr is our standard ad-hoc hourly rate. This would be charged for more complex migrations where a fixed quote cannot be provided, or where you simply need a tech to support you doing your own migrations. Purchased time is consumed through telephone and email support answering questions on the process, control panel, and general migration support.
Migration Finance (POA)
If you are taking up ongoing managed services or hosting with us, then we may be able to spread the cost of any migration across your annual contract. Please contact us for further information.